By PIPER KLEMM
It’s easy to look at and watch and have met Karl Cook in the last couple decades and think “he’s pompous.” I’ve done it, you’ve probably done it, your friends have definitely done it, and your elders have certainly done it. I know this because people share a lot of things with me and this comes up.
And yet, when it came down to it for Team USA this Olympics, he stepped up onto the roster at the last moment and produced the only two clear rounds for the Team Silver Medal. It was an impressive show of a lot of hard work. Yes, he has great horses and a great team. But he has great devotion and time to devote to bettering himself. That he has and he did, that was and will always be cool.
Watching his latest “Walking and Talking” video about the individual competition, you cannot help but be struck by how human and real he is and most importantly, how much this horse has changed him. Because we are all looking for the same thing-that horse that changes us. The things he says and owns and confronts are from someone evolved by growth and challenge. He shares no excuses, only ownership of his objective results. “It was a clear mistake. That’s really hard.”
For some people, the horse that changes them comes in their youth. Their trajectory changes, opportunities open up, and the world is their oyster to grow into or screw up. Some people hit it mid-career and are truly ready for it to happen. Some people it happens “too late” and they are stuck with if only, if only.
I implore everyone to watch this video and think about their own horses and their own relationships. It was a piercing phrase I have read in one form or another a thousand times in The Plaid Horse Adult Amateur Lounge: “It’s hard to avoid that I let her down,” said Cook in the video.
None of us ever want to let any of our horses down at any moment, in the competitive wins we so believe their status in the barn “owes” them. None of us wants to be wrong for any second on care or choose anything but the right fork when decisions need to be made. All of us would give everything for any second with our horses to be correct for them.
“I would say on that day, Caracole was the best horse in that class. The way she was jumping, how good she was feeling… Caracole was the best horse that day and I made a mistake,” said Cook. It is the universal feeling we have all had of walking home with the horse that created us that can never get the recognition they deserve due to a mistake we as riders have made.
